“Accelerating development of China’s satellite internet network is urgent.”
Xie Tao, Chairman and Founder of Jiutian MSI, April 24, 2022
Satellite Internet is emerging as one of the fastest-moving components of China’s New Type Infrastructure. Once treated as a forward-looking industrial project, it is now being reframed as core national infrastructure and the Russia–Ukraine war has sharply accelerated that shift.
Beijing is no longer viewing satellite connectivity primarily through a commercial or developmental lens. Instead, satellite internet is increasingly understood as a national security system: one that must be sovereign, resilient, and supported by a fully domestic industrial supply chain. In Digital China terms, this places Satellite Internet firmly alongside computing power networks, data platforms, and the industrial internet as foundational infrastructure rather than optional services.
Against this backdrop, a relatively obscure Beijing-based aerospace firm, Jiutian MSI, has quietly emerged as a significant actor within New Type Infrastructure (NTI) Tier Three subcategory: Satellite Internet.
Satellite Internet Is Not Lagging. It Is Accelerating
Among NTI’s many categories and subcategories, Satellite Internet is advancing at a pace comparable to China’s most heavily prioritized digital technologies. Unlike some NTI components that remain opaque to outside observers, Satellite Internet has been relatively well covered in English-language media over the past year, both in Western reporting and in PRC outlets.
Yet one notable gap has persisted: Jiutian MSI has rarely been mentioned in this coverage, despite its growing role in satellite manufacturing, systems integration, and NTI participation. That omission is increasingly difficult to justify.
China Space Day and a Signal Event
On April 24 (China Space Day) Jiutian MSI released a major industry study titled Who Can Pluck the Stars from the Sky: 2021 China Satellite Internet Industry Report and User Survey. The report was unveiled at the inaugural Zhongguancun Commercial Space Conference (中关村商业航天大会) in Beijing.
The title is drawn from a Tang dynasty poem by Li Bai, Overnight Stay in a Mountain Temple:
The tower is tall enough for me,
To pluck the stars from the sky.
At its top I dare not speak,
Lest I alarm the immortals.
The poetic reference is more than decorative. It signals a familiar pattern in elite Chinese technology discourse: the fusion of ambition, cultural literacy, and strategic aspiration. Even the firm’s name, Jiutian (九天, “nine heavens”), draws on classical cosmology associated with height, dominance, and martial authority.1
This cultural signaling aligns closely with how China’s advanced technology sectors increasingly frame themselves: not merely as businesses, but as participants in national missions.
Who Wrote the Report—and Why That Matters
The satellite internet study was co-authored by three organizations:
- Jiutian MSI (九天微星科技发展有限公司);
- The Institute of New Manufacturing (新制造研究院), affiliated with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) China Institute for Innovation & Development Strategy (CIIDS; 国家创新与发展战略研究会新制造研究院; and the
- Beijing-based aerospace firm Hwa Create (华力创通).
Among these, Jiutian MSI stands out. The company has openly expressed its ambition to model itself after Huawei as a core supplier, maintains ties to China’s defense aerospace ecosystem, and operates across multiple domains including microsatellites (including developing remote sensing microsatellites for Saudi Arabia), remote sensing, UAV systems, and satellite ground control.
This combination, private ownership, deep state integration, and broad system capability, is characteristic of China’s New Style Whole-of-Nation System approach to strategic technology development.
Jiutian MSI and NTI’s Satellite Internet Subcategory
Jiutian MSI describes itself as a service provider spanning China’s entire microsatellite industrial chain (微小卫星全产业链). To date, it has launched nine satellites and, as early as 2018, led the design and in-orbit verification of a “private” (non-government) 100-kilogram satellite.
Since 2019, the company has formally participated in NTI construction through the National Satellite Internet Network (国家卫星互联网). In 2021, Jiutian MSI became the first private satellite factory approved by the National Development and Reform Commission (who maintains the NTI register) after completing phase one construction and entering full equipment testing.
Once operational at scale, the factory is designed to produce up to 100 satellites per year, serving both state-owned and commercial customers. This capacity places Jiutian MSI squarely inside China’s long-term satellite constellation ambitions.
What makes Jiutian MSI strategically significant is not that it is unique, but that it exemplifies how China is building Satellite Internet: through a hybrid public–private model, embedded in national planning, and aligned with Military-Civil Fusion principles.
What the Research Report Reveals
The satellite internet study is based on a questionnaire distributed to 100 potential users (单位) across government and industry. While the full report is lengthy, excerpts of the research report are widely available online, both through state-run media and through “private” business media. Several findings repeatedly emphasized in PRC media are especially revealing.
Satellite Internet as a National Security Imperative
Nearly 80 percent of respondents viewed satellite internet as globally significant for China’s national security and development strategies. The report explicitly frames foreign low-Earth-orbit satellite networks as both a space resource challenge and an information security threat. “China must deal with the shortage of space resources and the information security threats brought by foreign low-orbit broadband satellite networks.”
China Is Still Building—but Catching Up Fast
Respondents broadly agreed that China remains in a developmental phase, focused on constellation (星座系统) design, testing, and industrial coordination. Communication between supply and demand across the satellite internet industrial chain is identified as a major bottleneck, precisely the gap Jiutian MSI aims to fill.
The Russia–Ukraine War Changed the Timeline
Xie Tao (谢涛), chairman and founder of Jiutian MSI, explicitly cites the Russia–Ukraine war as a turning point. U.S. commercial satellite companies, led by SpaceX, provided Ukraine with satellite services and ground terminals at scale, demonstrating how commercial space assets can be rapidly integrated into modern warfare. “This has given us a important insight: Accelerating the development of China’s satellite Internet network is urgent.”
For Chinese planners, this was not an anomaly but a warning: future conflicts will be shaped by space-based connectivity, and reliance on foreign systems is unacceptable.
“Chinese Characteristics” and the New Style National System
Xie Tao argues that China cannot simply replicate the U.S. approach to satellite internet. Instead, it must build a system “with Chinese characteristics” using the New Style Whole-of-Nation System (新型举国体制), a framework that concentrates nationwide resources on strategic priorities.
In Digital China terms, this distinction is critical. Satellite Internet is not envisioned as a purely market-driven service layer. It is foundational infrastructure, coordinated through national planning, integrated with security requirements, and aligned with broader Digital China objectives.
Beyond War: Civil Applications Still Matter
While security concerns now dominate, respondents also highlighted non-military priorities. Environmental and resource monitoring, disaster relief, and emergency response ranked as the most important future applications. Two additional areas, satellite terminal equipment and satellite big-data platforms, also emerged as key growth domains.
This dual-use emphasis reinforces a familiar Digital China pattern: systems designed for resilience and security are simultaneously framed as engines of development and governance modernization.
Why This Matters
Jiutian MSI’s emergence underscores a broader shift. Satellite Internet is no longer a peripheral technology within China’s digital agenda. It is becoming a strategic system, shaped by war lessons, national planning doctrine, and NTI’s infrastructure logic.
The Russia–Ukraine war did not create this trajectory, but it has accelerated it. And firms like Jiutian MSI reveal how Beijing intends to build the satellite layer of Digital China: deliberately, domestically, and systemically.
Foonote
- In classical Chinese mythology (late Tang dynasty), Jiutian Xuannü (九天玄女) was the goddess of war, sex, and longevity. The same “Jiutian” as Jiutian MSI. Earlier Chinese mythology posited nine layers of heaven (jiutian 九天) with the ninth layer (jiu 九) being the highest. This brings us to Sun Tzu. In the Art of War: “A good defender hides under the nine places, and a good attacker moves above the nine heavens.” ↩︎